Once upon a time, far too long ago in fact, I was treated to a wonderful dinner at the congenial home of heyoka and gnarl. It was, to try and completely avoid hyperbole, a difficult occasion to cater. Leaving aside the stress inherent in pleasing the varied palettes of a group of 10 (which are considerable), what heyoka intrepidly undertook to feed was a party that included a vegetarian, a vegan, the vegan's partner who eats only meat, a food phobic, and assorted deadly allergies to eggs, wheat, mushrooms, nuts and coconut. If I left anyone out I apologise; as the only fully functioning foody at the table I find it difficult to keep all the dietary requirements straight in my head. It is only the fact that I love these people so unreservedly that keeps me coming back to Edinburgh, because let me tell you, getting a decent meal there is a nightmare.
Anyway. Dinner kicked off with a wonderful, creamy, sweet, fresh and fragrant courgette soup which I have been pining for ever since. Seeing as we are in the height of courgette season, I recently gave up on getting h to reveal its mysteries and had a crack at reverse engineering it, thus:
I took...
- 50gr butter
- 2 large onions, coarsely chopped
- 300gr courgettes, cubed
- 300gr frozen peas
- 10 sprigs of thyme
- 1 litre hot chicken stock
- 1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint
- Salt and pepper
Then I...
- Melted the butter in a large stockpot and sweated the onion on a low heat, uncovered, for about 10-12 minutes, then added the courgettes and let them cook gently for another 5 minutes or so.
- Then I added the peas, stirred them in well and waited for them to un-freeze, at which point I also threw in the thyme sprigs and the stock. I raised the heat to medium-high and brought the liquid up to a simmer.
- After seasoning the soup and having a first taste, I lowered the heat again and left it well alone for the better part of an hour, simmering gently to itself. Warning: at this stage, it was not looking remotely preposessing.
- When the 45 minutes to an hour is up, your soup is basically ready - you just need to liquidise it if you can, which I do recommend: the texture of boiled courgette is not my idea of culinary heaven, and you also don't get the vibrant green colour from the whole chunks.
- Take the soup off the heat first, and let it cool just a little. Then stir in the chopped mint. Now, if you have one of those hand-held liquidisers then that is most convenient - you don't need to pour the soup out of the pot and back in again - but a blender or even a food processor (which is what I used) are just as effective.
- To serve immediately, reheat the soup again very gently and dish up into deep bowls with hunks of fresh bread. Yum yum yummitty yumyum.
Obviously, my version was not vegan. To achieve that just change the butter to olive oil and the stock to vegetable. Also, heyoka informs me that adding nutmeg and enriching the soup with Parmesan just before serving makes it even better.